Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [50]
Eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, the leader of the Rogues gave a slight nod, strolling at an easy pace as he was led into the building’s top floor, then on toward an elevator that would take him into the heart of the facility. They went deep below the ground-level floor, getting off the elevator to travel a network of curving, tunneled walk-ways that comprised part of the general garrison of the Rogue lair.
As for the leader himself, he’d been based in private quarters elsewhere in Boston for the past month, privately reviewing operations, assessing his obstacles, and determining his strongest assets in this new territory he meant to control. This was to be his first public appearance—an event, as was fully his intention.
It wasn’t often he ventured into the filth of the general population; vampires gone Rogue were a crude, indiscriminate lot, and he had come to appreciate finer things during his many years of existence. But an appearance was due, however brief. He needed to remind the beasts of whom they served, and so he had given them a taste of the spoils that would await at the end of their latest mission. Not all of them would survive, of course. Casualties tended to mount in the midst of war.
And war was what he was selling here tonight.
No more petty conflicts over turf. No more divisive in-fighting among the Rogues or pointless acts of individual retribution. They would unite and turn a page not yet imagined in the age-old battle that had forever split the vampire nation in two. For too long, the Breed had ruled, striking an unspoken treaty with the lesser humans while striving to eliminate their Rogue kin.
The two factions of the vampire race were not so different from each other, separated only by degrees. All that stood between a Breed vampire fulfilling his hunger for life and the Bloodlust addiction of the Rogue’s unquenchable thirst for blood was a mere few ounces. The bloodlines of the race had diluted in the time since the Ancients, as new vampires grew to adulthood and paired with human Breedmates.
But no amount of human genetic corruption would completely obliterate the stronger vampire genes. Bloodlust was a specter that would haunt the Breed forever.
The way the leader of this budding war saw it, one could either fight the innate urge of his kind, or use it to one’s best advantage.
He and his lieutenant guard had reached the end of the corridor now, where the pulsing drone of loud music reverberated through the walls and under their feet. Behind battered steel double doors, a party raged. In front of those doors, a Rogue vampire on watch sank down heavily on one knee as soon as his slitted pupils registered who waited before him.
“Sire.” There was reverence in the gravel of his rough voice, deference in the way he did not glance up to meet the eyes shaded behind dark glasses. “My lord, you honor us.”
He did, in fact. The leader gave a slight nod of acknowledgment as the watchman came to his feet. With a grimy hand, the guard pushed open the doors to permit his superior entry to the raucous assembly gathered within. The leader dismissed his companion, freeing himself to private observation of the place.
It was an orgy of blood and sex and music. Everywhere he looked, Rogue males groped and rutted and fed on a rich assortment of humans, both men and women. They knew little pain, whether or not they attended this event willingly. Most had been bitten at least once, drained enough to be riding a wave of lightheaded, sensual bliss. Some were further gone, slumped like pretty cloth dolls into the laps of wild-eyed predators who would not cease feeding until there was nothing left to devour.
But then, that